Kazakhstan offers to create “travel bubbles” with neighboring countries

It is offered to create travel bubbles in Kazakhstan with neighboring countries during the pandemic. Such “green corridors” are nothing new and are already actively implemented in the world travel industry, experts noted. According to them, the project will facilitate control over the passage of tourists over land borders and will enhance regional cooperation. Thus, visitors will not need to notify the authorities on their itinerary or stay in quarantine for two weeks. However, it is still necessary to take a coronavirus test. As part of the project, experts offered to create a regional interdepartmental commission for this project, improve the infrastructure of checkpoints and create common security protocols.

“The main flow of tourists comes to us by land. We have the longest border with Russia in the world – more than 7,000 kilometers. At the moment, our vaccine passport has not yet been adopted by other neighboring countries, except for Kyrgyzstan. But, nevertheless, there was news that Kazakhstan adopts vaccine passports of several countries, including Hungary, Armenia, Iran, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and others. Travel bubbles mean that it is necessary to create conditions to make tourists come to us. They should be created by some kind of protocol that allows visiting the country for tourism purposes, avoiding a lot of paperwork,” said Yernur Kenzhebekov, Press Secretary, Kazakh Tourism National Company.

Now, the project on “green corridors” for tourists is planned to be sent to the relevant authorities and discussed with neighboring countries. According to experts, such a practice will help restore the flow of tourists which was in the pre-COVID era.

Translation by Saniya Sakenova

Editing by Saule Mukhamejanova